Impact of COVID-19 lockdown on hospital admissions for epistaxis in Germany.

BACKGROUND

Reports of a decrease in hospital admissions during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) lockdown period have raised concerns about delayed or missed diagnoses and treatments for non-COVID-19-related illnesses.

AIM

To investigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic-induced lockdown and its end on hospital admissions of patients with epistaxis in Germany.

METHODS

A retrospective analysis based on the national database of the Hospital Remuneration System was used to compare hospital admissions during defined time periods between 2019 and 2022 with the lockdown period as the reference period. This was done on a weekly basis before, during, and after the lockdown. An Interrupted Time Series was used as the analysis method.

RESULTS

In our analysis, we included 26183 patients. The implementation of the lockdown led to a substantial reduction in the overall occurrence of epistaxis among patients (

CONCLUSION

During the lockdown period, there was a decrease in hospital admissions for younger patients with epistaxis, possibly due to the fear of COVID-19 exposure. We also conclude that the severity of epistaxis was not underestimated in the elderly during the pandemic.

Informations de copyright

©The Author(s) 2023. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.

Déclaration de conflit d'intérêts

Conflict-of-interest statement: All the authors report no conflicts of interest for this article.